The Power of the Paedos - another high profile case hits the 'never happened' wall?

[David Guyatt]

The Slog strikes again:

THE PAEDOFILE: Is Michael Gove's adoption the key to his odd attitude to care system paedophilia?

Michael Gove was taken from his mother, a University student, in 1967 and brought up by adoptive parents. He has no memory at all of either his mother or having been very briefly in care while his adoptive parents (to whom he is fiercely loyal) brought him up.Like many lucky enough to stumble into a better life than his birth mother could have provided, I suspect Mr Gove assumes that the system always works that well and quickly. There is no other pleasant explanation for his recent interventions into paedophile cases as Education Minister. So with that assumption, The Slog offers him yet more examples of just how badly wrong it goes…time after time after time.The leader of Kingston Borough Council resigned earlier this week after he was arrested for possessing indecent images of children. Derek Osbourne was taken into custody last Tuesday morning and taken to a south London police station, where he was granted bail until his trial, which is scheduled to take place in August.As well as being the LibDem leader on the Council, Osbourne was also in charge of several child-care committees. Acting leader Liz Green, said she was "deeply shocked". On and off, Derek Osbourne has been in his various Council Care Home roles since 1997. Given his experience, doubtless Michael Gove will now move to have him reinstated.……………………………………That institutional paedophilia is an international phenomenon was once again made clear on Wednesday, when an Austrian investigative commission concluded that kids at a former city-run care home in Vienna were routinely abused, raped, and subjected to other forms of sexual exploitation both by caregivers and outsiders. The 344 page report produced by the commission documented claims by former wards from 1948 to 1977….a period of nearly thirty years. The shocking abuse came to light in late 2011, after two sisters said they and the other 18 girls in their dormitory were regularly raped by groups of men. The sisters said the abuse began when they were 6 and 8 and ended in their early teens, when the institution was shut.Other alleged victims subsequently also came forward with testimonies of sexual, physical and psychological mistreatment in the late 1940s and early 1950s at the Schloss Wilhelminenberg home, which is now a hotel. City employees were aware of the widespread abuse but neglected to react', the report concluded. So too did Municipal politicians who learned the truth during the 1960s.Much of the testimony will be all-too-familiar to paedophile investigators. Victims told of how their carers took them from their dormitory to rooms where men were waiting for them. Several said they were drugged or forced to drink alcohol.Most of the children came from problem families, prompting disparaging comments about their backgrounds from those taking care of them that sometimes resulted in psychological damage, the report said.Claims of past abuse in Catholic church-run institutions in Vienna are now also coming to light.…………………………..This cheery message popped into my inbox a couple of days ago:I was made redundant from my job as Child Protection Officer at a Liverpool School in a deprived area in 2006. I was told I could remain at the School just as a Teacher but since I had been responsible for the most vulnerable children they had been so overwhelmed by the number of referrals I had made to Social Services that they had decided to move all the vulnerable children on to other schools and did not want to promote a policy of inclusion' (which was the buzz word of the time) any more as they did not want those sort of children' in their School. The referrals included serious neglect, physical and mental cruelty, but most of all sexual abuse. The Deputy Head at the School used to tell the children there, some of who never got a meal each day, that when she was sad she got her husband to buy her a diamond. I have never worked in a school since. The people who run the schools, like the Government, are out of touch bureaucrats who do not care about the welfare of our children and cover up messy misdemeanours in case it affects their intake numbers next year. We need to get rid of the current political system and get our children out of these correctional institutions masquerading as schools. Children are being let down the most by the whole system which is set up to churn out unproductive, unhappy, uninformed, neglected, abused young adults into the world. God Help them and us.'Mr Gove, you were adopted so young that, as the unwanted child of a 1960s student, it is extremely unlikely that you were in care for longer than four months. Please: stop assuming it's the same for everyone. You need to get out more.